New outdoor nets at Neston Cricket Club

Aim

Neston Cricket Club’s outdoor nets are in disrepair, not fit for purpose or safe to use. We are raising £20,000 towards replacing them

We need your help again...

In 2023 and 2024 we asked for your help to transform two parts of our multi sports club to help young and old, a fantastic new fitness studio and new outdoor cricket nets- your response was overwhelming, with your generosity and match funding from the Sport England initiative we raised over £50,000 and we now a have a wonderful state of the art fitness space and outdoor cricket nets - getting more people active and into sport.

Two years later we are now looking for your help again in 2026, this time helping us to transform our Hub of Hockey here at Neston - the artificial pitch (used for much more than hockey!) and our spectator area.

Before 

What a Transformation !

We are now looking for your help again in 2024, this time helping us to transform our Hub of Cricket here at Neston - the outdoor nets area.

We have lots of new rewards so please help dig deep again if you can and help us get even more people into sport.

Who are we?

Neston Cricket is part of the Neston Club and is one of the country's premier cricket clubs with two magnificent grounds and great social facilities.
Whatever your age or cricket ability you are welcome to play at Neston – we have a team for you.

Every Saturday in the summer we run four senior men's sides with our 1st XI competing in the Cheshire County ECB Premier League.

We also play friendly but competitive Sunday matches and have a very enthusiastic and successful Over 40s side.

Our Ladies team reformed in 2021 and now play softball cricket in the Cheshire League.

The Junior Section is one of the largest around with over 300 children - girls & boys from age 2 on our very successful All Sports Stars initiative through to aged 18.  

Each year we also welcome national competitions including the ECB Girls U13/U15 National semi finals and the ECB Disability Premier League and various representative matches.

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Why are we crowdfunding?

With such large cricket participation at all ages here at Neston, all our facilities face a huge demand on them, be it pitches, equipment, social areas etc. But the area which is the Hub of the club and the one which sees constant traffic throughout the summer is the outdoor net area.

The outdoor nets are so important and vital to developing and honing cricket skills, in use everyday from the start of April through to the end of September. Be it for organised training sessions or just children practicing together- the nets are always open for use.

Never closed unless the weather intervenes, we pride ourselves on saying they are always available. However with the nets becoming more and more dangerous we now having to consider closing the nets for casual use and only allowing organised training, something as a Club we want to avoid at all costs as we feel it is so important for children in particular to play and develop their skills together in an ad-hoc manner as well as in structured coaching sessions.

So we have a serious problem with this hub of the club which needs urgent attention and above all your help.

The outdoor nets are over seventeen years old and are now showing their age very badly, They have been patched & repaired a number of times but they are now no longer fit for purpose and in places no longer safe to use. The situation has been made worse over this winter, where a number of storms have flooded the net area and damaged further the playing surface and surrounding area.

To remedy the situation the Club is planning to invest in a new "state of the art" four lane outdoor cricket net facility and we are looking to raise £20,000 to help part-fund this exciting new project.

A project which will give all our players & visitors  young, old, girls, boys, women and men a fit for purpose training area to safely develop their skills and abilities. A new hub which will ensure we can continue to thrive and offer cricket to more and more.

As a club we are already actively involved in the community, hosting local school competitions, running holiday camps etc , the new net facility will allow us to expand our outreach plans with potential extra school training use and the introduction of disability cricket coaching.

We are hoping that the fantastic new outdoor nets will provide a environment that encourages  more people to take up and continue to play cricket across all demographics of our local community. 

• Attracting and retaining more junior girls & boys into cricket 
• Helping them develop their cricket and continue to play cricket as adults
• Attracting and retaining more senior men and women into cricket.
• Attracting more players in traditionally underrepresented groups/schools

How we’ll spend the money raised

Any donation or money from a reward purchased will go directly to the new outdoor nets project and help us sustain cricket training for all and allow us to offer so much more to the wider community.

We also plan to take advantage of opportunities from funding bodies such as England Cricket Board/Cheshire Cricket/Sports England , corporate sponsors and local authority grants as we drive towards our overall project target of £90,000.  

How you can play your part

There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.

1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!

2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.

3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!

4. Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – maybe a sponsored activity or similar – use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!

This project successfully funded on 27th March 2024